


On the Subject of Names

by hobofaerie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 11:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobofaerie/pseuds/hobofaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days you sit in front of the mirror and practice your name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Subject of Names

Some days you sit in front of the mirror and practice your name.

There’s magic in names, or at least that’s what Rose always told you, the kind of magic that can steal your soul and control someone like a puppet. You always kind of thought it was bullshit, but now, well.

Well.

If that’s so, you don’t want to ever speak your name – you’ve been manipulated too much for a thing as silly as a name to be your downfall. But you can’t forget your identity, not really, so you practice. Just so that you’ll never give away too much.

Your name is Dave. Not Dave Strider, because a Strider is a person, a being made of broken swords and sunglasses and irony and a smart mouth. A Strider is a Knight, a player of Time, who sees in red and purple and green green green.

You are not Dave Strider. Maybe you were, once, but that name belongs to another you now.

But you can be Dave, because a Dave is any old person on the street. A Dave could love dogs or swim like a fish or chain smoke while teen pregnant with her first child (because who says a Dave can’t be a chick?)

And even if a Dave _is_ a Strider, nobody will ever know which.

A Dave-possibly-Strider could be orange and feathery, or dead and green-suited, or in love with a shadow of somebody already gone. They could be hopping though time with a cackling marionette or kneeling by a bloodstained brother or lying on a quest bed. They could be jumping through dreambubbles or playing in a town made of cans or learning to mix with the hands of a toddler.

A Dave-possibly-Strider has a lot to choose from, really, and you can be any one of them.

(Because if nobody knows, then they can’t kill the one that you really are.)


End file.
